The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument, and more particularly to an electronic musical instrument which speaks in human voice names of the tones being produced.
As a musical instrument for children, there has conventionally been known as electronic musical instrument which renders an analog electronic circuit to generate musical instrument tones (e.g., organ tones) corresponding to the depressed keys on a keyboard. However, the electronic musical instrument of this type simply produces musical instrument tones and results in monotonous performance, so that children become tired of playing the instrument after a short period of time.
When various functions (e.g., an automatic performance function) are added, the instrument system itself must have a large size and is costly. Such an electronic musical instrument cannot be a low-end product for children.
In addition, conventional electronic musical instruments have a complicated system configuration and cannot be manufactured at low cost.
For example, in a conventional general-purpose digital musical instrument, digital waveshape data representing a musical tone waveshape is directly supplied to a D/A converter to form an analog musical tone signal. In this case, the D/A converter receives parallel bit signals. When the number of bits is increased, the arrangement of the D/A converter becomes complicated.
Furthermore, in a conventional electronic musical instrument, waveshape data is read out from a memory at a rate corresponding to the pitch of a note to be produced and is multiplied by a multiplier with envelope data. Output data from the multiplier is converted by the D/A converter, thereby obtaining an analog musical tone signal imparted with an envelope.
According to the state-of-the-art technique described above, an additional multiplier must be provided, and the overall system configuration is complicated.